He pointed to the eagerpromotion by manyright-wingers of an article with a misleading headline from CBS News reporting that Obama's pick has been applauded by the Iranian government while "causing jitters in Israel." The CBS News piece notes a statement made at a press conference by Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast, presumably in response to the Hagel nomination, that was first reported by Iran's IRIB news service and then picked up by Reuters. Here's the statement:

"We hope there will be practical changes in American foreign policy and that Washington becomes respectful of the rights of nations."

Based on the hysterical reaction of the anti-Hagel echo chamber, Armbruster concluded, "[I]t's sad the neocons have become so desperate in their anti-Hagel smear campaign that they're now promoting anti-American propaganda from Iran's foreign ministry to make their case."

Yes, Armbruster apparently believes that a boilerplate comment made by an Iranian official is "anti-American propaganda."

While the Iranian Foreign Ministry surely engages in its fair share of propaganda, just like any government does, this particular statement can't possibly be classified as such, especially when Obama's selection of Hagel has been widely interpreted as potentially heralding in a "policy shift on Iran." Even Ploughshares Fund president Joseph Cirincione suggested today that, with Hagel and Kerry in his Cabinet, Obama "is positioning himself to make the dramatic change in national security policy." A new article in Foreign Affairs by Columbia professor Robert Jervis also suggests the American approach to Iran policy needs an overhaul, increasing flexibility and diminishing its reliance on threats and ultimata.

Nevertheless, it seems that, for Armbruster, any criticism whatsoever of U.S. foreign policy is "anti-American propaganda," at least when it comes from the mouths of Iranians.

A year ago, Suzanne Maloney - a former U.S. State Department policy adviser and currently a Senior Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution - argued in Foreign Affairs that Obama's sanctions policy has cornered his administration into a pointless regime change posture with no chance for successful diplomacy. She wrote, "Indeed, the United States cannot hope to bargain with a country whose economy it is trying to disrupt and destroy," thereby putting its stated goals fundamentally at odds with its tactics.

"What needs to be addressed is the disturbing reality that the Obama administration's approach offers no viable endgame for dealing with Iran's current leadership," Maloney warned, concluding that "American policy is now effectively predicated on achieving political change in Tehran" which "will likely prove even more elusive than productive talks."

So, here we have an establishment scholar and analyst calling American policy toward Iran "counterproductive" and "disturbing." Does Armbruster believe Maloney is trafficking in "anti-American propaganda"?

Just yesterday, it was reported that a former Obama counter-terrorism adviser has described the president's murderous drone policy as counter-productive and ineffective in a forthcoming study for the Chatham House journal International Affairs. Michael Boyle, who was part of Obama's counter-terrorism team during his 2008 election campaign, writes that the administration's increasedreliance on dronekilling is "encouraging a new arms race that will empower current and future rivals and lay the foundations for an international system that is increasingly violent" and has "adverse strategic effects that have not been properly weighed against the tactical gains associated with killing terrorists."

Boyle also calls for greater transparency of the government's actions, as most Americans are still "unaware of the scale of the drone programme...and the destruction it has caused in their name." Whereas Obama, during his first presidential run, pledged to end the so-called "war on terror" and restorerespect for the domestic and international law, Boyle explains that Obama "has been just as ruthless and indifferent to the rule of law as his predecessor" and far more secretive, lethal and unaccountable, successfully "spinning the number of civilian casualties" to obfuscate the truth.

Naturally, with conclusions like these, Armbruster must believe Boyle is just spouting "anti-American propaganda," right? Was retired war criminal General Stanley McChrystal also spewing propaganda when he recently spoke out about Obama's policy of robot murder, noting that such policy creates "resentment," is "hated on a visceral level," and that it perpetuates the "perception of American arrogance." And that's coming from the guy who, reacting to the rampant killing of Afghan civilians by U.S. troops at checkpoints, said in 2010, "We've shot an amazing number of people...and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat."

Surely, Armbruster will take McChrystal to task for his anti-American nonsense in a future post.

But Ben Armbruster seems not to care about facts. As a dutiful ThinkProgress employee, he seems to care about defending the Obama administration, justifying its policies, and taking down its detractors. He also appears to adhere strictly to the mainstream script that anything Iran does or says is inherently dubious and usually nefarious, regardless of how true or uncontroversial it may be. Thus, Armbruster echoes the mainstream narrative (of both the left and the right), challenging nothing and reinforcing perceptions of Iran that serve only to raise tensions and misunderstanding.

When asked about his strange classification of Mehmanparast's statement, Armbruster explained that the suggestion that the United States might not be "respectful of the rights of nations" qualifies, by his criteria, as "anti-American propaganda." When asked whether he honestly believed the United States to be respectful of the rights of foreign countries, Armbruster doubled-down. "Yes I do," he replied. "Now that doesn't mean the US is perfect. But in this case, yes, Iran is attacking the US."

By Armbruster's standards, stating unequivocal facts, raising doubts over America's benevolence, questioning its respect for international law and the sovereignty of other nations, and criticizing decades of imperialism, war, occupation, bullying and threats is tantamount to an "attack" in the form of "anti-American propaganda."

But, of course, Mehmanparast hardly said any of that. His comments were non-specific and, quite frankly, tame. But, hey, they were probably uttered in the Persian language, so that's enough for Armbruster to dismiss and delegitimize them as a blustery rant. Ironically, in so doing - by labeling a reasonable critique of U.S. foreign policy as "anti-American propaganda" - Armbruster has become a propagandist himself, shilling for American exceptionalism, hypocrisy and overall obliviousness.

*****

Posted by
Nima Shirazi

1 comment:

Iran thru Open Eyes
said...

re: "That the United States has bullied international organizations into adopting policies that either abrogate or dismiss international law is beyond doubt."

The nomination of Jack Lew to Treasury broadly suggests that the USofA will continue its policy of attempting to cripple Iran's economy, coincidentally lining its empty piggy bank with millions -- even billions -- blackmailed from international corporations that do business with Iran. Doing business with Iran confounds the US's arrogant decree ceterum censeo Irania esse delendam.

"Nima Shirazi's is an important progressive voice in the Iran debate in the West, often deconstructing the myths (and sometimes propaganda) we commonly encounter in the mainstream media. With succinct and elegant prose, and with no axe to grind, he exposes the hypocrisy of Western attitudes toward Iran."

- Hooman Majd, New York Times best-selling author

"Wide Asleep in America is my go-to web locale when I want to be challenged on the conventional wisdom that the media spews about the Middle East...[Nima Shirazi's] passionate but methodical approach to politics is an absolute treasure."

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"Nima Shirazi is a brilliant analyst whose writing gets right to the heart of the issue without any messing around...His arguments leave little room for opposing conclusions from the ones he draws."

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Words of the Wiser

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."- Mark Twain

"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."- Howard Zinn

"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole."- Malcolm X

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"Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being."

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"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."- Abraham Lincoln"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive...those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."- C.S. Lewis

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"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty."- Henry David Thoreau

"Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization."- Eugene V. Debs

"The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded. It is a doctrine of the oldest and of the newest philosophy, that man is one, and that you cannot injure any member, without a sympathetic injury to all members."- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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"There's no hope, but I may be wrong."- Pete Seeger

"I'm witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I'm really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature. This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop."- Rachel Corrie

"Fear can only prevail when victims are ignorant of the facts."- Thomas Jefferson

"To protest in the name of morality against 'excesses' or 'abuses' is an error which hints at active complicity. There are no 'abuses' or 'excesses' here, simply an all-pervasive system."- Simone de Beauvoir

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."- Arthur Schopenhauer

"Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights and keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose. To that high concept there can be no end save victory."- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it."- Blaise Pascal

"No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny."- Hannah Arendt

"A state too expensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay; its free government is transformed into a tyranny; it disregards the principles which it should preserve, and finally degenerates into despotism."- Simón Bolívar

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."- Voltaire

"People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster."- James Baldwin

"The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."- Milan Kundera

"All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it."- Alexis de Tocqueville

"Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges; hence the conclusion of such a narration is apt to be less finished than an architectural finial."- Herman Melville

"Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made."- Franz Kafka

"Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied."- Arthur Miller

"Everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country."- Michel de Montaigne

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- Desmond Tutu

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"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious."- Smedley Butler

"The real difficulty is with the vast wealth and power in the hands of the few and the unscrupulous who represent or control capital... This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.- Rutherford B. Hayes

"Hard are the ways of truth, and rough to walk."- John Milton

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."- Max Planck

"With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence? How could they be the sponsors of something objective whose objective inauguration called forth their existence as oppressed? There would be no oppressed had there been no prior of violence to establish their subjugation."- Paulo Freire

"The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment."- Robert M. Hutchins

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"The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding."- Albert Camus

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."- Thomas Paine"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men."- Edward R. Murrow

"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."- Emma Goldman

"Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors."- Lewis H. Lapham"We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane."- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr."The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off."- Gloria Steinem

"Activism is my rent for living on this planet."- Alice Walker

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly."- Woody Allen

The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.- Italo Calvino (Invisible Cities)

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